Often I have railed against the stupidity of management, when designing one size fits all “round hole” policies. It is the single most abused policy anti-pattern in my experience.
Policy Structure:
For the purpose of this discussion, any policy can be divided into three components:
- Benefits (why I need a policy at all)
- Means (How we will get the benefits)
- Measures (How we will know the policy is working).
Policies are often not “free”, in that there is some cost to implementing the policy. Policies often have “side effects” that are changes not specified in the benefits. These side effects can be positive or negative. Usually, the side effects of policies appear as we have to adjust business processes and practices to comply with the policy. These adjustments are evidence of “square pegs”, or gaps in the policy that do not contemplate the essential complexities of the business model.
The old aphorism – “if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem starts to look like a nail” derives from this type of anti-pattern.Continue Reading